


To Entertain Oneself (In the Throes of Boredom)

by YellowWomanontheBrink



Series: Nurarihyon no Mago [1]
Category: Nurarihyon no Mago | Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan
Genre: Fluff, Gen, I REGRET NOTHING, I wrote this when I was twelve, Kidfic, SO MUCH FLUFF, Soooo much fluff, tricks and traps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowWomanontheBrink/pseuds/YellowWomanontheBrink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rikuo takes matters in his own hands when the throes of boredom becomes too much for his three year old self to handle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Entertain Oneself (In the Throes of Boredom)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm experimenting with posting on the archive....this was the first fanfic I ever wrote way way way back when I when in sixth grade. Please tell me if any formatting problems come up and if any of you guys have helpful tricks concerning posting, do not hesitate to tell me! I'm terrible with computers. :P

Rikuo was bored, wandering around the house, thinking up ways to test himself and his skills at managing to get everyone else in the house. He could here Tsurara talking loudly in the back of his mind as he attempted to climb the trees around the garden, hoisting himself up, unsuccessfully trying to reach the first branch.

“No Rikuo-sama! I’ve told you not to climb that tree. Suppose you fall down and hurt yourself? How am I…”

Tsurara’s voice trailed off as he stopped listening and stood up, rocking back on his heels and looking at her face move as she ranted on and on.

“Tsurara?” he interrupted.

The yuki-onna stopped talking and looked at the little boy.

“Yes, Rikuo-sama?”

“Do you know when otou-san will be done talking to all those yokai?”

His father had disappeared into the room to talk with the leaders in the clan. Rikuo was impatient; the only one that actually listened to what he had to say and didn’t talk down to him was his father. Everyone else wasn't a constant enough presence for Rikuo to be able to rely on them.

Tsurara frowned. “He should be out soon. Just wait for a little while, okay?”

Rikuo didn’t want to wait. “ Thank you, Tsurara-san!” He raced out of her sight back into the manor before she could say something else.

Now creeping silently next to the door, Rikuo dug into the pocket of his yukata to make sure the surprise that he brought from the market was still there. It still was. He had seen it, and decided it was way too pretty to leave behind, so he had begged Kubinashi to buy it for him. He would show it to his father, whom he had not had the oppurtunity of seeing yet that day.  
  
Placing his ear against the thin door, he waited until he heard a lull in the conversation, and came in quietly, and ran to sit in his father’s lap.

“Hi otou-san,” he mumbled, burying his face in his father’s chest. He could feel hands on his back, holding him more securely. Rikuo could feel all the yokai’s eyes on his back, and suddenly lost the courage to ask his father about the gift in his pocket. He mumbled something unintelligible as he dug his face in farther.

“Hi Rikuo,” Rihan said, a small smile crawling across his face at his son’s sudden appearance— and interruption.

“Why is he in here?” Hitotsume said abruptly. “Send him out. _Now.”_ Rihan looked at the one-eyed yokai and sighed.

“Rikuo, why don’t you go out now? We’re almost done now, okay?”

Rikuo turned his face up and put on an irresistibly adorable puppy face. “But I don’t want to. Can I stay? _Please?_ ” His large brown eyes were focused intently on Rihan.

“He has to go,” Hitotsume grumbled.

Rikuo faced the group of yokai. “ _Please?”_  he begged, his eyes widening.

Everyone eventually fell victim to the expression on his face. Murmurs of agreement echoed softly through the crowd. Rikuo smiled brightly.

“Thank you!”

 He settled comfortably on his father’s lap and watched the yokai in front of him. He was skimming his eyes over each and everyone and seeing if he could take them down, because Aotabo had proven himself very easy to trick. His eyes settled on the one who had first spoken against him and grinned he noticed him staring. Rikuo had decide to take his revenge. All that mattered was how.

Eventually they all stopped talking and left the room. Rihan put Rikuo down and kneeled so he could look eye-to-eye.

“Listen Rikuo, when I come here I have to do very important things okay? Next time, don’t interrupt.”

Rikuo nodded seriously. He took note of his father’s words and decided he would never interrupt another meeting, so severe was the expression on his father's face. He decided he'd go _with_ Rihan to the meetings.

He also decided to figure out a way to trap Hitotsume.

 

Later the next day, Rikuo approached the small patio outside the house leading to the garden. He stomped softly to check if it was hollow, and to his delight, it was. He grinned. Scampering off the patio, he stuck his head down and pulled at the boards that covered the hollow bottom. Beneath it was soft, wet earth.

 _Perfect…_ he thought.

He ran back into the house, dirt streaming from his soiled clothes and leaving a trail throughout the manor. He ran into Aotabo, who was just who he was looking for.

“Aotabo-san,” he said, rocking back and forth on his heels, “can you please dig a hole for me?”

The yokai looked down at him suspiciously, and hoping not to end up deep in the hole he would dig.

“Why do you need me to dig a hole?”

Rikuo made a pleading expression.

“Because I really need a hole dug here.”

Aotabo frowned, thinking of all the ways the demonic little boy could manage to get him stuck in a hole deeper than he’d originally dug, _again._ “No,” he said firmly.

Rikuo begged. “Please Aotabo-san? Please, please, please _please?_  I won’t let you fall in it.”  He looked up, innocent face begging with a pleading look in his massive brown eyes.

“Please?”

The final please did it for him and Aotabo took the shovel from Rikuo’s hand and proceeded to dig beneath the foundation, getting himself coated in a thick layer of dirt.

“I’m not digging anymore,” he growled.

“Oh no, you dug much too deep anyway. Arigato, Aotabo-san!” the little boy leaned up toward the muscled yokai, and he leaned his ear down.”And I suggest that you change your yukata before you run into Kejouro-san or okaa-san. They yelled at me because mine was dirty before.” Rikuo smiled brightly and ran off into the house, feet thumping on the now-hollow patio. Aotabo had a sour look on his face before he went in, much quieter than he usually would. 

________________________________________________________________________      

 

A few days later, his plan and ideas neatly layed out in his mind, Rikuo was flipping out the loose floorboard in his room to his massive expanse of rope, coiled up neatly and tightly. He pulled out the strongest and thickest rope he could find and rushed back outside to set up his net of complicated knots. Pausing by his mother’s room, he stopped and dashed in and out, now carrying a thick silk obi in his already much-filled little arms. Hearing footsteps walking down the hall, he leaned quickly back into the shadows, and watched as Tsurara stormed past, probably looking for him. But she didn’t see him. Rikuo was not easily found if he didn’t want to be, which was not quite often anyway.

 

 Rushing, he disappeared down into the now clean hole beneath the patio that he had cleaned out himself using very small spades ( the only ones he could use efficiently). He pushed the ropes into the ground firmly with stakes he had been gathering for a while, in complicated patterns and pre-set knots. He also went out and grabbed a bucket, stood on it and tied some more delicate- looking strings onto the pushed up boards, which had been previously loosened by his hands.

Everything meticulously organized, Rikuo stood back and looked at his handiwork. Loops of  thick and thin ropes overlapped, ready to be tightened by a single pullstring set up above the patio, within his reach. The thick obi lay cut into two equal strips on top of the bucket he had just stood on, waiting for later use.

 _Maybe Hitotsume might be more fun than I originally hoped,_ Rikuo thought, quite proud of his trap, which had taken him twenty minutes to set up. He couldn’t let Tsurara-san get antsy or she might call for his mother, and she was very hard to woo over.

 _Now all I have to do is wait,_  he thought gleefully.

________________________________________________________________________

 

Rikuo sat on his father’s lap quite comfortably as he once again watched the older head yokai talk. It had been several weeks since he first set up the ropes waiting for Hitotsume underneath the patio in the garden. Eventually he felt Rihan shift and call the meeting to a close, and Rikuo jumped off his father’s lap and rushed out the door. Everyone watched the light door close behind the boy. The group departed after him. No one noticed small Rikuo crouched in the corner around the door, lying in wait. Hitotsume was one of the last to leave. When the one-eyed yokai left the hallway, Rikuo energetically followed him.

“Hitotsume-san! Hitotsume-san! Wait!” Hitotsume stoutly ignored the boy peppering his heels.

When the pair turned onto an empty hallway, Rikuo made his move. He grabbed Hitotsume’s hand and dragged him down an opposite hallway into a path that would have made it necessary for the yokai to pass the garden to get to the front of the house. At that moment, Rikuo ducked back into the shadows that hid him and his black yukata well, running ahead of the grumbling yokai.

Finally, Rikuo commenced his final stage of plan: he turned the board of the patio slightly off so that the thin strings underneath would be stressed and pull the rest of the down, leaving the frame slightly bared. He climbed the doorway to be laying directly over Hitotsume’s head when he passed through. He gripped his small fingers tensely over the pull string that would tighten the contraption blow.

It all went directly as planned.

Before Hitotsume could yell, he was bound straight and tight by thick ropes pulled so tight it would crush an ordinary human. Layers and layers of tangled rope encircled his body, binding his feet together, and his arms to his sides, crushing his fingers. He strained and could feel thin wire cutting him. Just as he was about to cry out for help, the light was suddenly cut off from above and a small beam of moonlight entered and disappeared as someone entered the chamber, which smelled strongly of wet earth. He opened his eyes to catch a glimpse of a round face only to have it blocked out by something covering his eye and then a gag entered and tied around the back of head through his mouth. Wriggling, he could tell he was suspended, and there was abut two feet between him and the ground. He could hear a voice outside of where ever he was trapped; whatever yokai that had been clever enough to capture him with rope had left.

________________________________________________________________________

 

Rikuo crawled out of the hole, quite proud of himself for his achievements. But he was quickly stopped by Tsurara; she had chastised him loudly about playing so roughly and getting his clothes dirty.

“Let’s go, Rikuo-sama, you need to take a bath and clean yourself and then your dinner will be ready, okay?” the yuuki-onna said, completely caught up in her lecture and the thought of making dinner that she didn’t notice that Rikuo was trying to talk about his latest trap, and who it had been on. Rikuo gave up and agreed. He did want to eat, he was quite hungry.

After 40 minutes of assuring Tsurara and his mother, that _yes, he was clean,_ and _no, he wouldn’t play in dirt anymore_ , he finally got to sit down in the kitchen and eat. By te time he was done eating he was sleepy and full and didn’t even try and beg to stay up with all the yokai; he just passed out the moment he entered his room.

Unfortunately, he had completely forgotten to tell anyone (not that they would listen) about Hitotsume underneath the patio.

In fact, he forgot for several days; it had completely left the two-year old’s mind. The ambition to trap Hitotsume was dead and done a long time ago to him. He did notice something amiss, though, when he couldn’t find his coils of rope, and that was when it occurred to him he had completely forgotten Hitotsume and needed someone to get him out.

 

Mean while, a small panic was going throughout the older people of the Nura clan. They feared Hitotsume was dead as weeks passed on and no one heard a word from him.

_Who would be powerful enough to take—or worse, kill Hitotsume?_

Rikuo was aware of the unease spreading throughout the clan, but no one would ever take the time and listen to him, or answer any of his questions.

Finally, for a total time of two weeks, Rihan stopped and asked Rikuo:

“Rikuo, have you seen Hitotsume-san? He has been missing since he left the meeting rom two weeks ago, and you were the first to leave. Did you see anyone suspicious.”

“Nope, Otou-san,” he answered truthfully.

Rihan sighed and stood up, a brooding expression on his face.

“But can I _please_ show you something? I’ve been trying to show everyone but they keep ignoring me,” Rikuo said, an exasperated tone in his young voice.

Rihan smiled down at his son. “What is it?”

Rikuo grinned back. “My new trap.”

 

Rihan almost laughed out loud when he saw the old yokai bound and trussed up like a pig. By a two year old, nonetheless. The entire main house was crowded around the dug up patio, and most were biting their lips. Rikuo was beaming proudly.

“See Tou-san? I kept trying to show you guys but no one was listening, and then I kind of forgot, but then I remembered and tried to tell you, but you ignored me _again….”_

 The entire crowd was ignoring Rikuo and Wakana was down in the pit trying to untangle the enormous mess of strangely organized and tightly tied rope.

“Rikuo!” she called, “Get down here and untangle this mess, he slid down in to pit, walked over into the corner, and pulled on a small piece of string and everyone watched in awe as the web slowly untangled itself until all that was left was a gagged Hitotsume with a few minor cuts sitting in a mountain of curled rope, string and (now visible) twine.

“Geez, all you had to do was pull this string.”

Wakana once again was not listening as she untied the gags and looked down at what she was holding.

“Is this my obi?”

 

 

Rikuo was now sitting in his grandfather’s room, with his head down. Rihan kneeled in the back of him. And Hitotsume was still cursing under his breath. Rikuo picked u his head with large glittery brown eyes and a thick veil of shame across his features. Rihan looked sternly down at his son and asked Rikuo,

“What do you say to Hitotsume-san, Rikuo?”

Rikuo looked absolutely pathetic as he looked into Hitotsume’s eyes and said in a small voice ,“I’m sorry, Hitotsume, for tying you up and forgetting you there.” He looked down again and let shame roll off him in waves. He threw on his most innocent look and looked at his father regretfully.

Rihan caved in to the _face_. “Okay, you’re dismissed.”

“Yes, Otou-san,” Rikuo said, walking softly and closing the door gently behind him. He quickly dropped his façade and leaned close to the door, listening silently to the adults.

 

 

Hitotsume snorted after the boy left. He really wasn’t angry anymore (the _face_ had done its job well), but he was embarrassed enough as it was without having to add the little boy’s victory in staying out of trouble to the agenda.

“That’s all you’ll do to the boy, Rihan? You’re spoiling him.”

Rihan grinned and leaned back. “Nah, I’m not too worried, he meant it didn’t he? So he won’t do it again.”

The Nurarihyon entered the room, squinting at the door suspiciously before closing it firmly.

“I think Rikuo is a better actor than I am,” Rihan thought aloud. “He was much too proud of himself to ever have been _that_ guilty.”

Nurarihyon just snorted as he settled in the windowed corner of the room.

Now Hitotsume felt extremely stupid, he had been abut ready to admit maybe the boy did mean it, not that he would forgive him. He quickly excused himself and left the room, leaving Rihan and his father alone in the room.

Eventually Rihan also left.

 

 

Rikuo was in the back of the house kicking his feet in the small pond. He felt his father sneak up behind him and wrap his arms around his small shoulders.

“That was very bad of you Rikuo,” Rihan mumbled “next time, if you lay a trap, you shouldn't forget you laid one. Your enem,y might escape next time.” Rikuo smiled gently up at his father and leaned into him as Rihan rested his chin on his son's head.

They both sat and watched the moon and the clouds passing overhead for the rest of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> More of my stuff at my fanfiction page, under the same username.


End file.
